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Choose God or Choose Mammon

Apr. 30, 2017
| By
Creflo Dollar

Summary

When Jesus talked about money, he also referred to the spirit of mammon that can become attached to it. If we do not consciously choose to serve God, by default we unwittingly become enslaved to mammon. When we try to serve two masters, double-mindedness is the result. The spirit of mammon leads to the worship of material possessions; when we do more to get money than we do for the kingdom of God, we are under mammon’s influence. Mammon wants to keeps us in debt, both financially and spiritually, but applying the word of God in every area of our lives is our way of declaring war on it. This hateful spirit tries to extend its reach into everything precious to us, but we do not have to submit to mammon. We overcome it by deliberately submitting to God.

A. Mammon wants to keep us in debt. This is not God’s will for us.

He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much, and he who is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If therefore you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (Luke 16:10-13).

“The least” could be applied to various other situations, but in this particular context it specifically refers to money.

Jesus was not simply referring to money; he was talking about wealth that was under mammon’s influence.

Trying to worship God and mammon makes us unstable and double-minded (James 1:8).

Mammon will try to have us manage our resources but still keep us in slavery.

Debt is one example of this. Some of us need supernatural help to break free from debt. We can do this because we are not children of the natural, but children of the supernatural (Galatians 4:31).

But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water. He cried, and said, alas, master! For it was borrowed. And the man of God said, where did it fall? And he showed him the place. And he cut down a stick and cast it in, and the iron did swim. Therefore he said, take it up to you. And he put out his hand, and took it (2 Kings 6:5-7).

If the man had not recovered the axe head, he would have been in debt to the owner.

Iron does not swim naturally, but it swam supernaturally. God released supernatural means to keep the man out of debt.

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender (Proverbs 22:7).

Getting in debt is mammon-driven.

God wants us to be able to help others and bless them, but we cannot do that if we are in debt. We are told not to owe anyone anything (Romans 13:8).

B. Mammon wants to stop us in our tracks. God wants us to move forward.

Mammon will use us up, and then convince us we would be better off dying instead of pressing forward.

When God’s influence is on our lives, we hear him telling us to go forward and not to quit.

Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same a hundredfold, and the Lord blessed him. And the man waxed great and went forward, and grew until he became very great (Genesis 26:12, 13).

This happened in the middle of a drought. Mammon tries to stop us because it does not want us to move forward out of whatever spiritual drought in which we may find ourselves.

Jesus refused to quit in the midst of an agonizing situation; he trusted God and moved forward (Luke 22:44).

Even if we are weeping for the moment, we must go forward. Joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5).

Then Samuel took a vial of oil, poured it on his head, kissed him, and said, is it not because the Lord has anointed you to be captain over his inheritance? When you are departed from me today, then you will find two men by Rachel’s sepulcher in the border of Benjamin at Zelzah. They will say to you, the donkeys which you went to seek are found, and lo, your father has left the care of the donkeys and sorrows for you, saying, what shall I do for my son? Then you shall go forward from there, and you will come to the plain of Tabor, and there you will meet three men going up to God to Bethel, one carrying three goats, another carrying three loaves of bread, and another carrying a bottle of wine. They will salute you and give you a loaf of bread, which you will receive of their hands. After that you will come to the hill of God, where there is the garrison of the Philistines. And it will come to pass, when you are come to the city, that you will meet a company of prophets coming down from the high place with a psaltery, a tabret, a pipe, and a harp before them, and they will prophesy. And the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and you will prophesy with them, and shall be turned into another man (1 Samuel 10:1-6).

Oil was a type of anointing. The donkeys were found when the anointing came on Saul and his servant.

When we step into the supernatural, we can expect four things to happen.

Restoration will happen; God will restore the missing things back into our lives.

We will see supernatural progress. We will not have to settle for the average progress in the natural.

Through supernatural favor, we will receive things for which we did not work.

We will have a change of status. When we receive the anointing, our old status will bow down to our new status. We will no longer be what we used to be.

C. Mammon tries to use our past against us. God tells us to look ahead.

Do not remember the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing. Now it will spring forth, shall you not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43:18, 19).

We all have issues in our past, but we must let them go and move on. God has too much in store for our future for us to focus on what is behind us.

Our future has nothing to do with our past. God has removed our past from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12) and cast it away into the sea (Micah 7:19).

Whatever we did in the past could never outdo what God has done. When sin abounds, grace abounds much more (Romans 5:20).

Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect. But I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:12-14).

We are empowered to forget the things that haunt us the most.

We cannot press forward without opposition. Something will always come against us to try to stop our forward progress. Mammon is that opposition.

Mammon will try to seduce us into cursing our inheritance, and attempt to convince us to activate curses against our portion and increase.

This can happen in a place of discontentment. We must be careful not to murmur or complain.

If any man teaches otherwise, and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof comes envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputing of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness; withdraw yourself from such. But godliness with contentment is great gain. We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. But they that will be rich will fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. The love of money is the root of all evil, which some have coveted after. They have erred from the faith, and pieced themselves through with many sorrows (1 Timothy 6:3-7, 9, 10).

The spirit of mammon would have us asking questions out of doubt. It would also have us think that the more possessions we have, the godlier we are.

We must learn to be content regardless of the circumstances.

D. Mammon breeds discontentment. God teaches us to be content in any situation.

Not that I speak in respect of want. For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me (Philippians 4:11-13).

Paul had to learn how to be content. This takes time, but we must always be in the process of learning to be content.

Contentment is thankfulness for what we have, without thinking of what we do not have.

Let your conversation be without covetousness, and be content with such things as you have, for he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5).

God knows about our situations because he is always with us. He can use them to help us mature and teach us what we need to know about ourselves.

Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without right (Proverbs 16:8).

If we obtain possessions but we are discontented, we are being driven by mammon. We need to be okay with ourselves and with what we have, and be right with God.

Mammon is deceptive, and it leads us into presumption.

It tries to fool us into believing its lies are true.

For if a man thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself (Galatians 6:3).

Anything good that we have ever experienced came from God. We are not the source of our own prosperity.

God is not mocked, and we must not be deceived; we will reap whatever we sow (Galatians 6:7, 8). Mammon wants us to think that if we sow, we will not reap anything.